My old G5 has finally given up the ghost after being in a bad way for a while. For some time now if I shut it down I had to leave it for a few hours before it would start up again. Everything is backed up on an external hard drive via Time Machine. If I replace it with a newer G5 (would like a newer machine altogether but can't afford it) and plug the external drive in would I be able to load all my work and applications onto the new one and use everything the same?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Yes, just use Migration Assistant (MA) in /Applications/Utilities to bring everything over. Make sure you run software update ob the new machine first, because there were bugs in the original MA that were patched in an update.
Here is what you do... fire up the new machine and make a new account on it called "temp" or something (we will delete this later). Do not create your personal account on the new machine, that will be handled by MA.
Now login to your temp account and start MA and when prompted point it to your Time Machine backup as the source. Then click all the boxes in MA to import everything and tell it to start. This will bring in your personal account from the backup as well as all your data and apps.
When the import is finished, login to your personal account and if everything looks good, go ahead and delete the temp account.
You normally have to reenter serial numbers for some apps. MS and Adobe apps always seem to be the worst offenders here.
